Profile Information

I run a Philadelphia Based WordPress Development and SEO firm, ProTech Internet Group. We focus on creating user-friendly websites and driving traffic to those sites through sustainable online marketing strategies.

Full Name

Zachary Russell

Display Name

Zachary_Russell

Email

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Job Title

President

Company

ProTech Internet Group

Location

Philadelphia, PA

Favorite Thing About SEO

I like the ability to make a real lasting impression on businesses through creative marketing.

Additional Contact Info

Skype: ProTechIG

Favorite Topics

Advanced SEO, Analytics, Business Practices, On-page SEO, Reporting

Blog Comments & Posts

Wow that's sneaky. For a long time I have used google WMT to get a big-picture link profile as they still provide the most diverse level of domains. AHREFS, Majestic, and OSE are catching up though. The fact that they're blocking these user agents leads me to believe that sites like this won't be indexed by google for very long - sending different content to different user agents is a direct violation of WM Guidelines, I think - even if it's just 404ing. Thanks for sharing, this will be VERY useful for a link cleanup i'm about to begin.

This article is excellent. When I first started doing online marketing, it was focused on Local SEO, and it was much easier to rank locally and organically for these types of businesses. This article provides creative insights that can be actionable for many local business owners & marketers alike. Thank you for sharing this!

I couldn't agree more. Undoubtedly, as search improves, especially with things like Author Rank and other social ranking factors, links will become a dated ranking factor. I think it is wise to focus on inbound marketing as a whole rather than just as links or even SEO.

David, great post! I'm excited to see more things from you, and local marketing in general on Moz! I think it has been quite the interesting year in Local (and SEO in general). I think the more stringent review system is good as a whole, if it functioned as it should. I know before there was a lot of manipulation of reviews; people making fake ones, and this at least somewhat solves that problem. The issue comes when you have a client who says they asked a bunch of customers to review them, and they did, yet they don't show up on Google; I don't think it's fair to the customer to waste their time, or for local businesses either. Anyway, we shall see what happens in the near future.Zach

Scott, Truly an inspirational article. I am a WP Developer and an SEO, and I have quite a few ideas, and domain names that I have kicked around launching Adsense-based revenue stream websites. Using something as niche as Black Friday is great, though it only gives you significant income one month a year.

I love the insights you always give to the SEO community. The real question here is what does this mean for rank-tracking software across the board, even yours. I also think this adds a lot of questions for local SEO as well, because it gets even harder to get info on local results because they are location-based by nature, and it's impossible to have servers everywhere.I hope this gets explored moreZach

This was quite the engaging and enlightening post :) I do think that DA and MT should be used in identifying spam links at a high level, but lower levels need to be considered as well, thinks like anchor text diversity and others.

Hello Dana, There is an interesting way to integrate with the SEOmoz API in Google Docs which is relatively simple, though all the bitflag information is taken care of for you. The more advanced thing is the SEO Gadget to to integrate it with Excel Richard Baxter also did a great presentation at MozCon about how to do this specifically, and it also touched on bitflags and the like, if you wanted to dish out the money for the MozCon videos, i'd highly recommend it.Hope this helps :)

This is a great post. I know when I first started learning about bitflags, I went crazy trying to figure out what is what. This should definitely get promoted to the main blog, and really could be a cornerstone piece of information for the API information.

Social signals are definitively playing a more and more important role in the SEO world. Even if they didn't have a direct result on SERPs, things like Authorship attribution and the viral nature of social media have immense impacts on marketing as a whole. I really enjoyed Rand Fishkin's video on how G+ is affecting SEO as well.

This is a great interview. I am always interested in the inner workings of Google's Algorithms even though they seem at most times like mystical beasts. Hopefully, from rigorous testing, we'll all be able to get some insights into them so we can better do our jobs as SEOs.

I'm always excited to see a new mozscape update. I think the best is that you guys were able to do it $600,000 cheaper this month. I can't wait to see what happens when you fully migrate to the hybrid structure.

I really enjoyed this post. I think that any institution that is seriously considering getting into SEO should look for a more holistic method of getting traffic to their sites, and not just focusing on one category of link acquisition. It will pay off more in the long run.

Great Post! Two thumbs up.I deinately agree with you about building a relationship with your clients that are more than just a "client-contractor" experience. It really makes you real to your clients, not just this looming SEO Agency.I am at search love today, and one of the most interesting things stated was the number of companies that use stock photos for their staff page or their home page. A good non-offender of this is name.com, which brings life to a rather faceless industry, domain name registration.Another thing I like about Tom, or now more accurately would be Distilled in general, is how they do a lot of their SEO work in house for their clients. Another way of not becoming a faceless SEO agency:)

Social Media, especially Facebook, is an awesome media for marketing, it has so much more of a potential to go viral because social media is viral in nature. I think that all businesses should at least experiment with these pages.

I must say, this (not provided) nonsense is really getting out of hand. On some sites 65%+ of search engine traffic. What use are these "tools" if they don't help you, or only show you a part of the pie? I think that Google really should be more transparent with these kinds of things.

This is really a golden nugget of information for SEO & Inbound Marketing for preparing for the future. Between AuthorRank and overall Social Cues playing more and more of a role in rankings, this should be a cornerstone of anyone's marketing strategy.Thanks for the enlightenment!

This is a really good post. I switched from Joomla to WP exclusively about a year ago, but I remember with Joomla, SEO was really frustrating. Good job, and if I ever take on a Joomla client again, i'll definitely be using this as a reference.

This disavow a link tool will definitely make my job much easier, but i'm nervous to take the plunge. As we all know, removing too many links will cause a huge drop in PA/DA/PR and can have catastrophic effects. The trick is to find the right balance and replacing the spam links with quality ones.

As a WordPress Developer and an SEO, I find this quite useful. I'm actually launching a community-based blog in the near future, so i'll be implementing this into my own site very soon.Thanks, I love technical posts :)

This post video was a long time in the making. When Auditing sites now, look for things like engaging titles, social sharing, and rich snippets as a baseline of how up to date the potential client's site is. I also really like the idea of creating a brand instead of an "EMD" and in reality, it makes sense. Personally, i'd be more likely to click on something like rockinwatches rather that watches-that-rock.I do have a question though. I though with page load speed, 3g or otherwise, that the target load time was less than 1.5 seconds not less than 5. I'd appreciate if someone could elaborate on that, i've spent a lot o time and effort optimizing sites to 1.5 rather than 5.Thanks for the post and keep up the great Work a Moz!

Casey, I really enjoyed this post. As an avid customer myself, I am completely aware of what a great brand you guys have established for a great tool. Not only have you guys established a brand for yourselves, but you guys really do a great job of reputation management, which is great for SEO as well. This is a great example of #RCS, with FreshBooks, they offer an integration with dozens of other products; Basecamp and Tick are two examples of tools I use with them. When the integration has been made, there are blog posts on the respective sites announcing the integration of the two tools. Not only is this great from a marketing strategy, but there is a *QUALITY* backlink that is *RELEVANT* as well. You guys are doing great! Keep up the good work.Zach

I enjoyed this post, and agree with you point of view. As a webmaster/SEO myself, I understand some of these challenges, balancing the propeller-head with the creative in most cases. I do think that Google's algorithm updates really do make SEO more challenging, per-say. This is where I become a real big fan of the Wil Reynolds #RCS statement. If we were all doing things that legitimate companies should be, we wouldn't be experiencing the challenges that we are. Saying that real companies shouldn't have blog comments as a link building strategy is an understatement.

Personally, I am focusing my time an efforts into doing RCS rather than the old tactics. As an SEO, I don't want to contribute to a Spammy web, I want people to find good content, my content, easily and legitimately. This is fully feasible under Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and even though it may require extra effort and thinking, it will at leas help in future proofing my sites, and my clients' sites from future Algo-updates that could cripple a large amount of my competitors' sites.

This is kind of a sad story. It isn't uncommon either. All the time I have seen people who pay a ton of money to people who claim they know SEO and then end up doing more harm than good in the long run. I really think that Google needs to help us with these disavow a link tool and stuff like that to help honest people recover from problems that weren't their fault, they were just ignorant of the sutiation.

This is kind of a bummer. I think EMDs should have a larger impact than they do already. I understand that Google is trying to fight webspam, but it seems that Google's "Do no Harm" policy isn't being enforced anymore.

I like the idea of being able to create infographics on a budget. Your article really can help people build these, somewhat behemoth piece of content. I do think though that infographics, as akin to guest blog posts, are reaching their saturation level. One thing to keep in mind when creating infographics, that they are actually adding value to the web. More and more, i'm starting to see respun infographics.

I'm so excited for SearchLove Boston in November! I surprisingly saved almost 50% by getting the early bird ticket and getting the SEOmoz discount. I'm looking forward to see all of the good speakers in November.

Great Post, Even though Adwords is typically not good for SEO in a lot of aspects, I find myself using Query Analysis all the time for larger adwords outreach campaigns. I can also typically use the Average CPC as a great indicator of keyword competition.

This was a great presentation. At a local SEO meetup they covered this presentation, and it really was informative. It encourages me, as a techical SEO, to delve into areas that I don't know, and am not comfortable with, which is good.

Great! I have been waiting these for a month now. I have seen Wil Reynolds speak a ton of times, as I'm in Philly, and he is an amazing speaker. He really wears his "SEO Heart" on his sleeve. I am acquaintances with a few of his employees, and they all love working for SEER, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK MOZ!

Awesome post! I'm actually am thinking about going to the blogosphere on both my personal blog, and an SEO related blog, and it's really an inspiration to see that other people can succeed. I guess to really succeed you need to really think outside the box instead of doing cookie-cutter blog posts. Though, I still think I will be writing my own posts on specific topics that aren't outside the box due to the fact I think I can create a single authoritative source of one type of info, for example, WordPress Security.

Great article, I really enjoyed it. I agree with previous comments on how APIs have changed how we interact over the years, especially as content becomes more dynamic. It's also interesting to see the difference in websites. I think that many CMSs are starting to have more and more API integration either "out of the box" or through plugins, which is really interesting. For example, I noticed that there was a MozScape API plugin for WordPress, unfortunately it is completely dated and no longer works.

This article was extremely well written and really hit home with me. I am an SEO and a Web Developer who just took a job as an in house SEO for a medium sized company. I am constantly getting asked technical questions by both the marketing end and the development end about best practices, and the creative end of my job is often forgotten or put on the back-burner.

I think by becoming an "Elvis" of my company can help the overall strategy of how we come to decisions. You are definitely right about simply writing quality content isn't enough, though I do like Nick Eubanks article yesterday on Evergreen Content, it's just piece of the pie.

Another great post. Evergreen content is a great way for sites to gain consistent traffic. I know personally, I'll be creating more Evergreen Content on my websites as a compliment to my time sensitive content and blog posts.

I just had a client whom was affected by penguin due to the illicit actions of an unnamed SEO Agency. I have spent a ton of time recovering from pengin, and we just saw the first influx of organic traffic in months (since penguin). I hope your penguin recovery goes well, your actions should help you!

You couldn't pick a better time to publish this post. I do agree that there are so many spam implications with Exact Match and Partial Match Domains. I actually am running into this now with a few of my client's sites. Though we arent spamming sites, and they hare actually very relevant content-wise, we had multiple domains with the same keyword variation. The lesson to take away is that Exact-Match and Partial-Match domains are only helpful for domains that have real content, that is adding real value to the Internet.